Life a whole new ballgame in U.S.

Silver Hawks shortstop talks about how, why he left his native Cuba.

Silver Hawks shortstop talks about how, why he left his native Cuba.

June 12, 2007|PABLO ROS

When he made the announcement to his family members, at the last minute, they supported his decision. Yunesky Sanchez had been wrestling with it for three or four months. He had everything to gain, he thought, but possibly also everything to lose. "It could be that I might never see my family again," says Sanchez, a Cuban native who is now a shortstop for the South Bend Silver Hawks. In the dark, early morning hours of April 24, 2004, Sanchez and 17 others, including his father, boarded a 21-foot speedboat off the coast of Cuba and hoped for the best. Despite the distance that separates the island from the United States -- a mere 90 miles -- others before them had perished at sea while fleeing Cuba. Their journey, however, was without incident, Sanchez recalls. Twenty-four hours later, they landed safely in Florida. Sanchez, who is in his first season with the Hawks, is off to a good start. Prior to Monday night's game, he had a batting average of .288 and was third on the team in runs scored with 33. What's more, the 23-year-old has been selected to play in next week's Midwest League All-Star game, along with three other Silver Hawks. "It's been going well," says Sanchez, who is learning English with some of the other Latin American players on the team but is the only one from Cuba. For more than a decade, Cuba, which altogether lacks professional sports, has been losing more baseball players than ever before. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 dragged the island's already struggling economy further downhill and seemed to cast a shadow over its government's socialist ideology. Sanchez, whose first name, he says, is Russian inspired, grew up in a world increasingly disillusioned with itself. Playing in the Cuban National Series, Sanchez recalls with a gesture of scorn the sight of internationally known Cuban ballplayers who earned little more income than the average person. "They were famous and everything," Sanchez recalls, "but they had nothing." What Cuban ballplayers who have chosen to remain in Cuba say they have is a concept of dignity, of refusing to become a piece of merchandise to be traded from one team to another. What motivates them is not money, they say, but love of the game, and in a country where baseball is as much a national symbol as its flag, they share a sense of sacrifice for their people. "Nothing wrong with that," Sanchez says. "But nobody likes it. No ballplayer likes that because you can kill yourself on the field and nothing happens. You don't get rewarded." Ballplayers like Sanchez who come to the States to play for money often seek a lot more than that. In essence, they are giving up one world for another, different one. "Everybody loves freedom. I wanted to be able to freely do what I know how to do. That's what motivated me," says Sanchez, explaining why he came to the States. "Over there you can't do what you want. You can't say what you want." In Cuba, he says, "sometimes you don't even want to play ball. You have to worry about other things, like other ways to find money. Sometimes you don't care whether or not you play." Besides, he continues, "it's the ballplayers who agree with the government that get ahead." Fidel Castro declared Cuba a socialist republic in 1961, shortly after taking power. Since then, the country has boasted many accomplishments -- among them in education, health care and athletics. For a country of 11 million people, Cuba takes a fair share of Olympic gold medals. In fact, the Cuban baseball national team has won gold three times in the last four Summer Olympics. The island's accomplishments in sports may even seem to vindicate its form of government in the face of its critics. That's in part why a well-known ballplayer's defection is full of meaning. Sanchez recalls what the mood was in Cuba when José Contreras, who now pitches for the Chicago White Sox, failed to return home in 2002. "It was a scandal," Sanchez says. In the United States, ballplayers are above all indebted to themselves. "Here, what's yours is yours," Sanchez says. "If you're good, you move ahead. If you're not, you don't." Sanchez spent nearly three years training in the Dominican Republic, where scouts look for players, before signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He also had to leave the States before applying for legal status. Now that he's here, Sanchez admits, he doesn't know when he might return home and doesn't even want to think about what would happen to him if he did. Sanchez also says he doesn't wish any ill will on Castro, whose health has apparently been declining, but hopes there will someday be a change of government. And that means years might go by before he is able to see his mother, younger brother and grandparents again. They live in Matanzas, near Havana. His father lives in Miami. Asked if he sends money home, Sanchez says he doesn't. "In my house it isn't so much money that is lacking," he says. "It's freedom." And the freedom to dream of personal success. Someday he might help his brother, who is 19 and is also a ballplayer. Asked what his personal goal is, Sanchez, who is well-built and stands more than 6 feet tall, smiles shyly, as though the answer were obvious. "I'd like to play in the Major Leagues," he says. Staff writer Pablo Ros: pros@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6357